Often you do just want to talk about the distribution of the data - like, you want to know something about where an observed data point is likely to fall if you reproduce the experiment. Then std dev is more appropriate then std err.

About ~25% of our science funding is from non-federal sources (including external grants and internal funding from the endowment). So even without federal funding, we will still be doing research. But we have to make a plan for it not being at the past level.

PhD students in the sciences are largely funded (probably ~75% or so) by federal grants, and Harvard has been told it will never get federal funding again. The research enterprise is a university-gov't partnership and one partner is reneging on the deal.

Yes, this is accurate.

Strangely, here in the US, no... can't imagine why